The town of Gallabat is five miles distant from the bed of the Atbara. It is built on the slope above a small watercourse. This rivulet and the adjacent supply of drinking water which the inhabitants use are—in all but details—as they were in Sir Samuel Baker’s time. He thus described them:—“We were horribly disgusted at the appearance of the water. A trifling stream of about two inches in depth trickled over a bed of sand, shaded by a grove of trees. The putrefying bodies of about half a dozen monkeys, three or four camels, and the remains of a number of horses, lay in and about the margin of the water. Nevertheless, the natives had scraped small holes in the sand as filters, and thus they were satisfied with this poisonous fluid; in some of these holes the women were washing their filthy clothes.”[21] There are three wells in the town from which good water is obtained. The soldiers of the garrison use this supply, and it is available for all who will take the trouble to draw from it. But generally, the inhabitants, either because they are too indolent to pull up buckets or from mere adherence to custom, prefer the “poisonous fluid” procured in the traditional way.
Our quarters were in the dismantled Dervish fort, which lies on the summit of the hill, above the town. The thick brick wall which surrounded it is now ruinous. In the enclosure are barracks for a detachment of the Arab Battalion, a small rest-house, and the telegraph station.
We set our boys to pitch three tents for us, and before long I had the indescribable delight of tubbing in my portable rubber bath.
After this we received, in the rest-house, the interpreter whom Menelek had sent to await us. His name was Johannes. I learned that he had been three weeks in Gallabat, so perhaps it had been expected that we should travel more rapidly than we did. With him were an assistant, by name Walda Mariam, officially attached to his “mission,” and a servant.
Johannes was a tall, handsome man, with grizzled hair and beard. In person he seemed cleanly, but his shama—the toga-like robe, also known as “quarry,”[22] which is universally worn by Abyssinians—was soiled. It is unfashionable, and even a breach of established custom, for a man to appear in a clean shama except at rare intervals. As all sorts and conditions of men in the country are infested by vermin it may be imagined that an Abyssinian’s clothes usually add nothing to the pleasure of his company.
Our interpreter had spent three years in Marseilles, and we found that he and his followers conformed to the requirements of civilization as regards dirt much more closely than the generality of his countrymen. I do not know whether Parkyns’s description of the use of butter as pomade still holds good in parts of Abyssinia; probably not very widely, as Mr. Wylde tells us that “European hats are getting very common, and are generally of the bowler, wideawake, or Terai patterns,”[23] but in the western provinces, where nearly all the people whom we met were peasants, we saw no sign either of this innovation or that the dairy had been drawn upon to smarten the coiffure. Nevertheless, greasiness of person was the rule.
I may mention here that bodily cleanliness is not only unusual in Abyssinia, but raises a doubt as to the genuineness of a man’s religious profession. In this respect matters have not changed since Parkyns’s time. “St. John’s is the only cleanly day in the calendar; for in the evening the whole population, male and female, old and young, go down to bathe. It is a fact, that, excepting on this occasion, there are many of the number, who, beyond washing their hands before and after meals, and their feet after a journey, never trouble the water from one year’s end to another. My habit of washing every day in the European fashion gave rise to much scandal on my first arrival; and it was constantly inquired, ‘Is he a Mussulman, that he thus washes, and so often?’”[24] The Abyssinians are fond of shaking hands, and it is impossible to avoid this civility without giving serious offence. Nearly all, owing to their independence of soap, suffer from a complaint once associated—wrongly, no doubt—with a highland region nearer home, and the result was that none of the Europeans of our party escaped scabies.
Johannes possessed a felt sombrero, which he held in his hand when we received him in the rest-house. Like most of his countrymen, he wore a cartridge-belt around his middle. He also carried a revolver in his belt. His “boy” held his rifle. Altogether the interpreter was a picturesque but piratical figure, and it occurred to me that a group of Abyssinian “villains” would be effective in a melodrama.
The interpreter bowed to the earth each time we addressed him. He had brought letters for us from Menelek and from Colonel Harrington, the British Minister at Addis Abiba, which is now the capital of the country. The king’s letter is a kind of superior passport, which is generally granted to Europeans who enter his realm with his consent. It is useful, but is not too obsequiously respected in all parts of the land. Johannes had a fair knowledge of French—a matter of importance to one of his calling, seeing that the Abyssinians and the French are neighbours, and that an increasing amount of the commerce and traffic of the country is likely to pass through Jibuti. A railway has been commenced from that point, and a concession obtained from Menelek for its extension into his dominions. Mr. Herbert Vivian has recently pointed out the important developments which may be brought about by the construction of the line.[25]
The Dervish fort at Gallabat is literally a “cockatrice den.” We speared eight or nine fine specimens upon the walls, using our knives, and among them was the largest black scorpion I had seen. The rest-house swarmed with these disquieting arthrogastra, and one of our servants was stung during the evening. Parkyns remarked that, though he had several times endured the sting himself without serious consequences, he had heard of many instances which had ended fatally.[26] Our boy probably had in his mind a similar dismal record, for he howled till midnight. I had very little sympathy with him, especially as he prevented me from sleeping. He, like the other servants, had been provided with boots but persisted in running about the fort barefoot.